


the redder the rose, the many more thorns

by TheGreatLibraryFangirl (Mazeem)



Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Christopher Wolfe is Not Ok, Dissociation, Eventual Romance, Foster Care, Found Family, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Whump, biological determinism, probably highly unrealistic depiction of mental illness too though I'll try, unrealistic recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:02:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25280572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazeem/pseuds/TheGreatLibraryFangirl
Summary: Niccolo Santi is a supportive guardian for a houseful of troubled boys. He's looking for Brendan Brightwell when he picks up the phone one afternoon, not a new case.Christopher Wolfe certainly isn't a boy, and he's far more traumatised than Santi has experience with. Can he help this bitter, prickly man recover, or will he let Wolfe drive him away?Alpha/Beta/Omega-verse fic with heavy whump.
Relationships: Dario Santiago/Khalila Seif, Jess Brightwell/Morgan Hault/Thomas Schreiber, Niccolo Santi/Christopher Wolfe
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [What I Used To Be](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6915553) by [thepinupchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepinupchemist/pseuds/thepinupchemist). 



> "There are mornings when I wake and I am back in the cell, and I see nothing but the dark. Feel nothing but the pain. On those mornings, I am convinced I never escaped that place, and the life I have had since never existed at all, except as a fantastic illusion."
> 
> (Ephemera just before Chapter 4, Paper & Fire)

Wolfe woke himself up crying out. He stared at the ceiling until he’d got his bearings and settled his breathing rate, and then shifted his gaze to the reassuring nightlight on his bedside table. Sun was streaming through the curtains, too, glinting off the gold stripes in the wallpaper. 

An entirely normal morning. A good one, too. On the bad mornings, he heard what he said as he woke, and then he had no chance of forgetting or ignoring what he’d been dreaming about. All the sunshine and pretty wallpaper in the world didn’t help then. 

He climbed out of bed. It was still a novelty to be able to do that sort of complicated movement without intense pain. The open wounds he’d arrived with had healed to various stages of scabs, and the bruises had faded to a disgusting sickly yellow. The aches in his joints and back were almost comforting in their familiarity. He could even pretend they had benign origins. 

He was old enough for arthritis now, wasn’t he? He tugged unhappily at the wide streaks of grey in his long hair. 

Google would know. Carefully, he picked up the phone that he had been given just last week. He’d maximised the size of all the icons and keys and enabled Sticky Keys, but his stiff, clumsy fingers still flubbed the search term a few times. 

No. Thirty-eight probably wasn’t old enough for the arthritis excuse just yet. 

Still, he read the article thoroughly, and clicked through to pages about all the different varieties. Finding something to read helped to get his mind working. Stopped it sliding over the words like glass while his mind read him horrors instead. 

The Kindle that he’d been given was a well-meaning but pointless idea - he’d never been into the frivolities of modern fiction. 

Closing the page on ‘polymyalgia rheumatica’, which he was definitely too young to have, he checked the clock. Did he have enough time to shower before his breakfast arrived? Maybe.

Just as he thought that, and gripped his thin pyjama top to strip it off, he heard footsteps and smelt someone approaching outside the door. Down the corridor.

Most people would have smelt the approach first, even though it was a faint beta scent. Most people didn’t have Wolfe’s forcibly honed hearing. 

Most people wouldn’t automatically freeze at said approach, muscles tensed, breath lodged painfully in his throat, body icy cold and tingling with a full-blown adrenaline blast. 

_It’s breakfast, you idiot_ , he told himself, but his own voice in his mind was still feeble compared to everything else in there. 

The first time he tried to speak, nothing came out. He breathed in and out, carefully, and tried again. 

“Naomi?” He _knew_ it was her - he recognised her lavender scent and footstep pattern - but still it came out as a question. 

“Morning, Wolfe!” she called back. “I’ll be with you in a minute!” 

Great. She was _that_ far down the corridor. He could probably have worked that out, if he’d listened hard enough, but there was absolutely no element of ‘listening extremely closely for approaching footsteps’ that would benefit his mental state. 

His skin crawled while he waited, and he had to resist the urge to scratch at the easily accessible scabs on his forearms. The room felt smaller all of a sudden. 

The facts again, then. “It’s Naomi Ebele arriving with breakfast, you witless sack of shit,” he snarled to himself. The back of his neck itched with his raised hackles. He tucked his hand under his irritatingly long hair and massaged the itching skin. The self-soothing worked, a little. 

“Today should probably have been a breakfast-with-the-idiots day,” he announced when Naomi knocked on the door. 

He hated communal eating, both for its overwhelming noise and constant movement around him, and for the other omegas he would be forced to keep company with. Wolfe had never been one for socialising, even before … everything. 

However, his natural solitary inclinations had been utterly fucked-up and co-opted. Sometimes claustrophobia drove him to seek larger rooms, where even the sight of the other omega clients was better than hiding from the shadows passing his door but most of the time his stupid fucking panicked reaction to crossing his threshold kept him 

~~trapped~~

~~penned~~

cooped up in this room ~~that was no bigger tha~~ n -

“You can still give it a go today,” Naomi said through the closed door, interrupting his thoughts. “I can take the tray there.”

With only a mild tremble in his fingers, he grabbed the door handle and turned it. “No,” he said to her face. “I can’t be bothered to get dressed.”

“All right.” She handed him the breakfast tray and nodded in acknowledgement of his words. 

Naomi was his favourite assistant, with her cheerful but reserved manner. Even her hair was unfussy, greying and clipped very short.

A lot of the other assistants were coddling and cloying and _motherly_ , and that might have been acceptable when he had first arrived, a useless leaden lump of flesh, but he’d eventually got so frustrated with being fucking _cooed_ at that he’d bitten the next hand to stroke his cheek. 

(His therapist called that admirable boundary-setting, albeit in an inappropriate form.)

“Shall I note you down as eating in the dining room tomorrow?”

Wolfe sighed. Opened his mouth to reply and then closed it again. 

His mind wanted to call it ‘outside’. Because anywhere outside the room was Outside or There. But no, he was going to the dining room. A place to eat. It was a specific destination and not the There that he tried never to think about. 

But it felt like There. Everything felt like There. 

And just like that, his perceptions had flipped again and these four walls were safety. Fuck, he hated this. 

_Name it. That’s what the therapist says_ , he reminded his suddenly heavy-feeling tongue. 

“I don't want to go to the dining room.” He kept his voice level. Hoped his flailing thoughts weren’t obvious. 

Naomi made an immediate note on a notebook clipped to her uniform. “Parker wants to see you at ten’o clock in her office.”

They both looked at the clock. It was quarter past nine. 

“Shall I tell her to reschedule?”

Wolfe bristled despite himself. He sensed patronisation. She’d figured out that today hadn’t started perfectly. 

_Hard not to when you bleated like a frightened kitten when you heard her coming this way_ , he berated himself. 

But then he looked down at himself as he shifted the laden tray in his grip. Saw the tangles in his greasy hair and the tide marks of sweat on his pyjamas. The last few days hadn't been ideal, and this would be his first change of clothes for a while. 

Right. He stank like a pig and Naomi didn’t know if he would have time to eat breakfast _and_ smarten up. Fine.

But the very fact that Parker wanted to see him in her office, rather than her making the rounds to visit him ... he knew this game. 

As a matter of fact, the more he considered it, the more suspicious he got. Naomi hadn't told him about the office meeting until he'd already declined to eat in the dining hall. If he'd agreed to that, would the doctor have come to his room as she usually did?

He gritted his teeth. He hated being manipulated. What was this, a swap? One excursion out of his room swapped for another? Or was he accidentally 'proving' something? Would they make him leave the room tomorrow to see if his "progress continued"? Or if he refused to leave his room to see her, would they make him go to breakfast tomorrow because of that?

Naomi was standing there, patiently, waiting. He tried to marshal his thoughts. 

There were no good options. That, at least, was familiar. 

It was a pathetic illusion of agency, but he decided to take the only scrap of choice that he had:

“No, don't reschedule. I’ll see her at ten.”

“Do you want an escort?” Naomi tilted her head, and a stray sunbeam shone on her dark cheek. Wolfe appreciated sunbeams, now. 

Sometimes having an escort when he left the room helped him to feel less terrified. Sometimes it made it worse.

His mind wasn’t giving him any advance clues, today. Fuck it. He'd made the decision. Best to throw himself into it. 

“Just knock for me.”

Once she’d left, he settled into the comfy chair next to the window and investigated breakfast. 

Originally he’d been restricted to bland porridge, but his stomach had expanded again and his taste-buds had started to adjust, and now there were relatively more exciting calorie-dense options. Today’s offering was toast with margarine (not butter) and lightly salted scrambled eggs, with a glass of whole milk and a banana on the side.

He craved a greasy fried breakfast and coffee to wash it down, but when he’d tentatively tried grilled bacon last week he’d been stuck on the toilet in pain for over an hour. 

Today’s breakfast didn’t exactly enthral his taste-buds, but it went down his throat easily and stayed there and that was the most he could really ask for. 

In the shower, he gingerly ran his hands down his abdomen. Maybe he wasn’t quite so .. angular. Good. Excellent. He counted his palpable ribs, very carefully, saying the numbers aloud, switching up languages to keep his mind present and occupied.

If he closed his eyes he would remember when touching his ribs had necessitated even more care, lest the pain make him cry out, which caused more pain, which caused more screaming which caused - 

If he opened them to look down at himself, he would remember the repeated flash of the police photographer's camera, and the way the light had hurt his eyes and made the whole situation feel utterly fake. 

He held his breath and stared fiercely at the white shower tiles in front of him and rinsed the soap off himself in a rush. 

When Naomi knocked, he was standing by the door, fully dressed, if the soft silky clinic-issued garments he wore could be considered day-to-day clothing, hair tied up to the best of his fucked-up fingers’ ability. Nausea swirled unpleasantly in his belly, but he thought it was anxiety rather than how quickly he’d eaten breakfast. He hoped, anyway. 

One step, over the threshold. His heart was pounding, but he was all right. Naomi's black T-shirt was coarser than the material of his clothes; he noticed it when he brushed against it as he passed her. 

Two steps into the corridor.

One look ahead at the thin shape of the route winding out before him, and fear descended like a plague. 

He lowered his eyes to the floor and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other while his blood chilled and his stomach roiled. His feet felt heavy and clumsy, but he knew better than to stumble.

_Get a grip_ , he told himself, but the terror of There was driven in far too deeply for a pep talk. 

The cheerful pattern of coloured lines on the floor blurred before his eyes into the nondescript beige carpet that lurked in his subconscious. He walked and walked and froze and shivered and waited to be yanked to a halt.

“Wolfe!”

That wasn’t the voice from his nightmares. Either of them. 

Naomi was standing very close to him, close enough for him to scent her if he did that sort of vulgar, overly intimate thing and she smelt like lavender and he didn’t expect lavender either. No, that wasn’t the stench swirling around the inside of his mind, not at all. 

With a convulsive shudder, he focused and pulled himself back to the present and reality. He was standing in front of Dr Parker’s office door, shaking and drenched with icy sweat. Fantastic. 

“You’re stupid, standing that close,” he told Naomi, giving into the defensive urge to roll his lip up in a snarl. “I might have lashed out.”

She looked at him without an obvious response on her face or in her scent. “Are you with me, Wolfe?”

He nodded and scoffed. “Yes. I’m fine.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I suppose I can’t persuade you to stay out here for a moment and breathe?”

In answer, he shouldered past her and knocked hard on Parker’s door. 

A little of the tension in his limbs faded as he entered the room. It was hard not to be affected by the salty pheromones, long-soaked deep into fabrics and wallpaper, of the powerful alpha who was in charge. It was _her territory_.

He’d heard, once, in one of his previous sojourns into the communal dining room, that she had a different room and a whole washing routine that rendered her nearly scentless for meeting with patients who couldn’t bear the strong alpha presence. 

He liked it, personally. He hated that he found comfort in that scent, but of all the things that he couldn’t control lately about his own damned mind, feeling safe in another alpha’s territory seemed minor. And a relief. 

“Hot chocolate, Wolfe.”

He realised that he’d been staring at the floor - which was carpeted but not in beige - and straightened his neck so fast that it clicked. 

“Do you mean, ‘Nice to see you, Wolfe, please take a seat. There’s hot chocolate available if you want it,’ or are you just being a cave-alpha today?” His voice came out nice and clear and level. 

Her wine-dark eyes flashed with amusement. “I’ll stop being nice if you want.” She shifted her stance, as if to become more aggressive in her practical black polo shirt and black trousers. 

Wolfe rolled his eyes at her. His head throbbed, but it was worth it.

“'Nice' is a filler word used by asinine milksops. I never want you to be 'nice'.” he retorted, sitting in the proffered chair. The mug of steaming hot chocolate was so warm under his fingers that his eyes fluttered shut involuntarily to enjoy it. It helped to chase the chill from his extremities. 

He heard her inhale. “Was the walk here tricky?”

He fought to keep his expression neutral. As if she hadn’t heard the whole thing with Naomi just outside her door. As if she couldn’t smell the fear as it oozed away from him in rank, cold sweat and bitter pheromones. 

“It’s just the corridor.” He raised his hand to brush a strand of hair behind his ear, and ended up pressing his heated palm to his cheek instead. That felt amazing. 

Damned Alpha pheromones. 

He curled his hand into a fist to cut off the sensation. “I can _do_ it now. The corridors. It’s just … unsettling. Doesn’t seem to matter whether I’m being -” 

~~dragged~~

~~taken~~

~~led~~

“- escorted or not.”

“Mm-hm.” Her dark brown fringe dropped into her eyes as she lowered her head to make a note. She wrote in shorthand, of her own personal creation, and Wolfe hadn’t yet quite managed to decipher it upside-down, though he had a few attempts noted in the journal they insisted that he keep. “You’re still staying in your room most of the time.”

Wolfe scowled and took a mouthful of the delicious hot chocolate. It was so sweet that he felt sick again, but it was worth it. “!'m here, aren't I?

“Because you wanted to, or because being alone was starting to play tricks on your mind?” She paused, and when he didn't respond, added, "Or because you thought if you did this you could avoid being hassled about it for a while?"

“Oh, fuck off.”

She didn’t respond immediately. Determined not to be led into saying anything, Wolfe focused on the hot chocolate. The second sip was just as good as the first. 

Hot chocolate combined with her strong ocean scent - could he ask for this, next time, instead of a sedative or anti-anxiety pill? He almost smiled at the thought. 

“I have a proposal,” Dr Parker said at last. 

“Oh, fan- _tas_ -tic. I can’t wait.” Wolfe took an extra large gulp and winced at the heat. A thought snagged his attention, and he stared into the cup for a moment. “I suppose alcohol is out of the question?”

She chuckled. “Maybe if you carry on eating well for the next two weeks you can try a glass of wine with dinner.”

He inclined his head in a little show of thanks, then immediately wished that he hadn’t. Too deferential. Damn alpha pheromones. 

“Get to the point, then.”

She clasped her hands together and rested them on the soft white wood of her desk. “You’ve been here for nearly a month now. You need to leave your room more or you’re going to develop full-blown agoraphobia.”

A shiver rippled through him. He managed to minimise its appearance by holding his breath and keeping his muscles lax. The thought of being trapped in his room was almost as terrible as the attempts to leave it. “I know.”

“No, Wolfe.” She leaned forwards. Her pheromones changed to a softer scent. “I’m not going to bullshit you and say you need to try harder. You’re doing astonishingly well. I have an idea for a bridging mechanism, to help you with the anxiety of navigating the corridor and the overwhelm of multiple people.”

“Oh?” This time when he rubbed his cheek with his warm hand, it was less satisfying. He felt like a sheet of glass was starting to descend between him and the world at the mere thought of all the effort this was doubtless going to entail. He just wanted to be curled up warm and cosy in his bed with the door locked. That was all. 

“How would you feel about having a volunteer sit with you in the hall? I was thinking about an alpha since you respond well to me, but of course-”

“Oh, _what_ ?” Shame suffocated him and for a moment he was struck dumb with it. “No-o.” His voice shook. _He_ was shaking. “Those are for the poor fucks who can’t even eat without choking, Parker!”

Her eyes were on him, leonine and implacable. “No, they’re not. Don't exaggerate.”

“I’m not that bad!” He could barely breathe through the sense of failure. “I don’t need ... fuck, Parker, I don’t need a _babysitter_.”

He shoved himself to his feet. His legs wobbled and his head whirled; he was hyperventilating and couldn’t stop. 

“Calm down, Wolfe.” Her voice was level and reassuring and her pheromones washed against him in the most soothing manner imaginable, but he was far past that sort of babying. 

Wolfe snarled at her, wordless with frustration, then whirled around and marched straight out of the room.

He made it back to his room with no problem at all, the corridor be damned. He could barely see it through the overpowering cocktail of fury and humiliation churning through his body. 

_He wasn’t that bad!_

He curled underneath the pile of blankets on his bed. They smelt awful; the cleaners hadn't had a chance to change them recently. Right now, he didn't care.

Sleep didn't descend; he wrenched it over him with sheer willpower. Something that resembled sleep, anyway, that left him leaden and useless and pathetic and barely able to roll on to his other side. 

When someone unearthed him, some time later, he wailed like a frightened kitten. He heard himself, that time. Couldn’t avoid it as he wept into his pillow and waited for the pain.

“I’m sorry. I’ll be good! Don’t take me. Please don’t. You said you’d stop. You said. Please don’t …”

* * *

“Nic! Phone’s ringing!” 

“Who is it?” Nic shouted back up the stairs, eyeing his nearly-cooked bacon. No-one rang at ten o’clock in the morning on a Saturday. 

The next thing that he heard was Jess descending the stairs in that horrifying way that he had when he was in a hurry where he basically just grabbed the bannister and _hurtled_. 

“Jesus Christ, how many times have I -”

Jess thrust the phone at him. “Clinic!” Nervous pheromones rolled off him like oil, so strong that Nic’s heart-rate kicked up in response to the supposed threat. 

Nic turned off the hob and pointed at Jess. “Bacon’s done, ish. Sit, eat, calm down.”

His phone had rung perhaps seven times by now and was still going. 

“Niccolo Santi,” he answered curtly. 

“Nic! Sorry to disturb you so early!”

“Starting off the conversation with a lie already, Parker, this is going well.”

Parker sighed. “Ok, skipping to the points, no, this isn’t about the other Brightwell boy, and yes I did read the note where you said you’d run out of house space and possibly brain space for any more kids, excepting the previous mention, should he ever reappear.”

Nic sighed and his shoulders sagged. “One second.” He stuck his head back into the kitchen and shook his head at Jess, who was sitting in front of an untouched plate of bacon and visibly trembling with anticipation.

At Nic’s shake, Jess kicked the table leg hard enough that it had to hurt his bare foot, and then tipped his chair back onto two legs. 

Nic watched, mildly impressed. He’d expected to have to get off the phone and stop Jess going on a wild, directionless run to deal with the disappointment, but balancing his chair on two legs without holding onto anything was the closest thing to a grounding, focusing activity that he and Thomas had yet managed to teach him. 

Which, on that note: “Boys! Bacon!”

“Coming!” Thomas replied immediately. It was a day for his charges to surprise him - Thomas was generally too engrossed in inventions for food. Jess had obviously been doing a good job of distracting him. 

Silence from Dario, though. That, at least, was normal. Nothing got Dario out of his lazy pit until midday on weekends. 

Still, he waited until he heard the upstairs landing creak under Thomas’ footsteps before he put the phone back to his ear.

“Right. Why did you ring, then, if not to tell me anything important? Just to make digs about my brain space?”

He’d known Parker, the head of the omega refuge and support clinic, for seven years now, so he narrowed his eyes and paid attention when she didn’t take the opportunity to re-open the banter. 

“When you first did all your paperwork, you ticked both the inpatient and outpatient support options. I know you’re full on the outpatient side of things-”

Nic winced at hearing his boys described as such. Jess was still an active patient at the clinic, but Thomas wasn’t anymore and Dario was … Dario.

“-but do you have any space in your week for low-level inpatient support?”

Nic’s other ear registered a particular type of silence coming from the kitchen, and he pivoted away into the living room. He’d probably tell Jess all about the phone-call anyway, but best not to reward eavesdropping. 

“Depends what we’re talking about. I do have a life, you know.”

Parker snorted. “You don’t.” She sighed. “It should, in theory, be very simple. The patient gets very anxious about the communal dining area, and would, we all think, massively benefit from having someone sit with him while he eats.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’. I’m, in fact, sensing an entire cricket changing room full of butts, Parker, and more bullshit from you than usual.”

“Shut _up_ , Nic. The patient, of course, disagrees. He reacted very badly to my first suggestion, but by now his therapist and I think his view might have changed from ‘this is a sign I’m failing in my recovery’ to ‘if I agree to it, they’ll leave me alone.’”

Nic pulled a face. “That doesn’t sound like progress.”

“Oh, believe me, it is. It’s also typical. He’s a ‘bury his head in the sand’ sort.”

Nic sighed. Like he didn’t have enough of that to contend with already. “Fine. I suppose I can spare a couple of meal times a week to get glared at like I’m responsible for everything wrong in his life. How old is he?”

“Thirty-eight.”

Nic nearly dropped the phone. “Parker!”

He heard the grin in her voice as she spoke. “Did I not mention that?”

Nic tapped his fingers on his belt. “That _matters_. I’ve not supported an adult before.” The dynamics would be completely different. 

“Relax. I haven’t even shown him your scent sample yet. He might think you stink.”

Nic’s shoulders dropped from where they’d tensed. “I am about two seconds from driving there to throw this phone at you like you deserve.” 

“But can I put you in the selection?”

Nic heaved a huge sigh. “Fine.”

He wandered back into the kitchen, pondering the call, and walked headfirst into the weight of Jess’ stare. 

Thomas was there too, munching his way through a bowl of cereal, but Jess had wound himself back up to vibration-state and there was no avoiding that. 

The unpleasant scent of distress made Nic’s skin crawl, despite his regular exposure. He hoped it always would do - if he ever stopped being viscerally alarmed by it, he not only needed to stop fostering, but probably to eat his gun because he would have become one of the dangerous people he tried to protect others from. 

“You said you’d keep Brendan’s room free,” Jess accused. 

Nic blinked. “If you only eavesdrop on half the conversation, Jess, you only get half the information.” 

Jess narrowed his eyes. His hair was sticking up over his ear, which suggested that Thomas had been attempting to calm him with a bit of scenting and nuzzling. Thank God for Thomas and their suspiciously-tactile-best-friend relationship.

“Bollocks. I know what Parker whittling you down sounds like.”

“ _Doctor_ Parker. Yes, she rang to see if I was willing to be put in the scent samples for,” he held up his hand to tick the items off, “a couple of times a week dinner companion, for an inpatient, and a thirty-eight year old one at that.” Nic put both hands on the table and leaned. “No-one’s coming to the house.”

Jess held his gaze, just because that was the sort of shit that Jess did, but the anger went out of his expression almost immediately. “Oh. Right.”

“Told you,” Thomas said, nudging Jess with his shoulder. Jess gave him a moody sideways glance, but nothing more. 

Judging that it wouldn’t prompt Jess to flee, Nic rounded the table and squatted down next to him, grasping his shoulder and giving his neck a little rub with his thumb. 

“I’m sorry it wasn’t Brendan.” He tilted his head towards Jess, and breathed a sigh of relief when Jess sighed and rolled his eyes but leaned in to press their cheeks together in a comforting scent exchange.

The next moment, Jess was up again, clearing his plate like that was an important task. “Yeah, well, go and shave already.”

“Yeah.” Thomas handed his bowl to Jess. “They might want you in for lunch.”

Nic stared between the boy’s empty plates and the empty pan, and sighed. Looked like he was making himself more bacon. 

“No,” he said as he opened the fridge, “They haven’t even given the guy the scent book yet. And,” he blinked in realisation, “I doubt any adults are going to want my whole … ‘in-charge’ thing. Vibe. Attitude.”

He knew as soon as he said that that it was a mistake. The heavy, gleeful silence that followed confirmed it. He sighed as he heard Thomas snigger. 

“Oh, _Alpha_ …” Jess whispered, in a faux-passionate tone. 

_That_ made Nic slam the fridge shut and raise his eyebrows at Jess. Jess knew better than that. 

Boundaries were always a bit weird with the young people he supported but he had always made sure to draw hard lines around sex talk beyond him giving advice, regardless of their gender or orientation. He _was_ an unrelated Alpha, after all. 

Jess rolled his eyes, put the crockery loudly on the counter-top and left the room. As usual, Nic had no idea what Jess had expected to gain from that bit of boundary-rattling. 

“Jess! Could you check if I left the welder on?” Thomas called after him. It was a rushed, transparent attempt to redirect him, and Nic wasn’t surprised when the back door slammed with no response. 

Back door was fine. That was just the garden.

“Good try,” he said reassuringly to Thomas. 

Thomas raised his faint blond eyebrows. “If you say so. I’ll go after him in a bit.” He eyed the pack of bacon in Nic’s hand hopefully. Then there was a creak from upstairs and Thomas’ eyes widened. “Speaking of shaving.” He shoved his chair back and ran upstairs, shouting, “I’ll be out in a minute!” to Dario as he passed his room. 

Nic laughed to himself. It was a valid concern if Dario was rousing himself. Though Nic had imposed stricter timings for weekdays, Dario liked to spend at least an hour in the bathroom. 

Two hours later, Nic picked up his vibrating phone and stared at it. 

“You’re shitting me,” he said, instead of a greeting. 

“You’re a match,” Parker said, between gulps of something to drink. Probably coffee, though she was the sort of alpha who gave off whiskey sophistication at all times of day. 

“Did you literally show this guy the scent book the second that I got off the phone?” 

“More or less.”

“... You did show him other people too, right?”

“Don’t be stupid, Nic. I’m hopeful, not unethical. Full range of support options. I’m delighted he picked you, though.”

“Yeah, more on that, please. Why the fuck am I useful? Surely you’ve got any number of Alphas signed up with experience supporting adults?”

“You’re a soft-hearted but tough-skinned bastard. I’ve not got many who are both. This omega used to be a professor - he speaks, like, five languages - and he’s the sort of person who thinks therapy is a mutually manipulative game where he just needs to find the right things to say. We rotated him through three therapists in the month he’s been here, before I gave in and called Murasaki purely to assuage the intellectual snobbery.”

“So, what, I’m so stupid that he’ll ignore me?” Nic really wasn’t sure where Parker was going with this, so he pushed. 

“That. Yes. No, not your obvious stupidity.” She laughed. “You enjoy banter. Insults. Wordplay. I’m hoping that he’s going to find riling you enough of a challenge to be a distraction.”

Nic sat down on his bed and rubbed his still-unshaven cheeks. “Right. Well, if I’m to be the sacrificial lamb, you’d better send me a list of triggers to avoid.”

“Already got an email half-finished. I’ll send you the basic version of his notes to look at, too.”

And so that was what Nic spent the rest of his Saturday afternoon doing. Reading about Christopher Wolfe, aged thirty-eight, held in total confinement for a year by his alpha and beta mates and subjected to treatment that, even in the reduced “Support Files” version, turned Nic’s stomach. 

Areas to avoid seemed to be … pretty much everything, as far as Nic could tell. 

Don’t call him ‘Christopher’. Definitely don’t call him ‘Chris’, ever.

Don’t mention his imprisonment. 

Don’t talk about his childhood. It started with being born into a religious cult and finished in a children’s home.

Don’t talk about his career. During the year of his imprisonment, his Alpha had apparently set about ruining his academic reputation, discrediting his theories and getting as much of his work removed from publication as possible. 

Don't help him finish sentences if he trails off. 

Don’t be too alarmed if he starts to hallucinate or dissociate - but do tell a member of staff immediately. 

By the time that Dario wandered into Nic’s bedroom to ask what they were eating for dinner, Nic had a thumping headache and tight, anxious shoulder muscles. 

“Cook something yourself, you’re eight-fucking-teen,” he snapped before he could stop himself. “Shit. Sorry.”

“Literally no-one wants me to cook, Dad.” Dario, the only alpha of the group and the only one who called Nic ‘Dad’ despite his shorter stay than the others, leaned against the doorway and crossed his arms. “Notes for that new guy Thomas was talking about?”

Nic nodded. “ _Confidential_ notes.” Because it never hurt to remind Dario that Nic was on the look-out for his troublesome behaviour. 

“Yes, yes, fine.” Dario waved his hands. “Going to go and babysit him, then?”

“ _Dario_.” 

Dario did, to his very minor credit, wince at himself. “You’re a _good_ babysitter?” 

“For that, you’re definitely fending for yourself, food-wise. I’ll warn Thomas.” Nic sat up and rubbed his forehead as his headache spiked. 

“Was it a hard read, that file?” 

Oh, that was very Dario. Only because Nic had his eyes shut and was openly expressing pain did Dario drop the bitchy bravado. 

“Yes.” Nic rubbed his eyes, even though that made his head hurt more. “I’ve already lost count of the ways I could fuck up just sat next to him in a dining hall.”

“You’ll be all right.” Dario sounded utterly confident, and Nic opened his eyes to be greeted with Dario’s rare, intense, sincere gaze. “You’re reassuring. Intrinsically.” He looked away, then, and tugged fussily at his grey cravat. “I’ll get you a painkiller.”

Nic watched Dario retreat. Not the Dario of a year ago. Not at all. 

Maybe there was hope for this new situation after all. 


	2. Chapter 2

Nic had spent the next couple of days on tenterhooks, but he hadn’t received any more calls from Dr Parker. In the end, it was nine days later when he received his marching orders. 

Here he was, then. Ten minutes past one, Tuesday afternoon. Those ten minutes made him itch; he was a strictly punctual person. 

But; “Turn up a little later,” Parker had advised. “He wants to be in the room before you get there.”

All right, then. 

After picking up his visitor pass at the reception desk, Nic went to wash his hands. He’d do it before he left, too. He’d been in and out of the clinic for the past seven years and found out the hard way that, like a school, the high-occupancy premises were hothouses for germs. 

The hand soap was unscented and he had already followed visiting procedures by showering with a scent-blocking scrub that morning and avoiding anything that could produce an adrenaline rush for two days beforehand. 

(Well, he’d attempted the latter, anyway. Living with three teenagers often resulted in adrenaline.)

The rules applied regardless of one’s sex, but undeniably it was more important for alphas, entering this safe omega space, to avoid a strong pheromone output.

 _Yeah, Nic_ , he said to himself sarcastically as he wiped his hands dry on paper towels. _Don’t be nervous. Simple_.

He nodded to the assistant waiting for him, and let himself be escorted down the corridor even though he knew the way to the dining room. 

Dario hadn’t arrived with him in an orthodox fashion, so it had been well over a year since he’d sat across a table from the glowering Brightwell twins, both trying to protect each other, both determined that they were grown-ups and didn’t need any help and _definitely_ not from an alpha.

Thinking about Brendan made his negative emotions swoop in a different direction, and he immediately started counting the tiles in his field of vision to distract himself and keep his pheromones under control. That was difficult enough as it was; not only was he nervous but the very walls of this building were permeated with the sour, hair-raising scents of miserable, depressed or angry omegas.

Still, he had been in far trickier situations and kept his cool. 

Nodding his thanks to the assistant, he walked through the doors to the dining room. 

Going back to his earlier comparison, this dining room was a little like a school in that it was full of people of varying ages and brimming with noise. But no-one was loud in the way that schoolchildren often were; the noise merely came from enough people eating and talking to the person opposite them. 

Nic automatically eyed the section, subtly cordoned, where the under-eighteens sat, as if Brendan might somehow appear there. 

“Mr Santi?”

Guiltily, he blinked and focused on the tall female beta in front of him. 

“Call me Nic.” He smiled, and she smiled back. 

“Nice to meet you, Nic. I’m Naomi. I thought I’d point Wolfe out to you.”

Undercurrent; stop looking at the kids, alpha. He couldn’t exactly argue with that. 

Before she had even fully extended her hand to gesture, Nic thought he’d spotted Wolfe. 

“There, right? Next to the wall, third table from the door.”

Naomi nodded, and raised her eyebrows. “Done your homework?”

Nic shrugged and smiled in, he hoped, a distractingly winning fashion. He hadn’t actually looked up Wolfe’s image online. It had felt far too invasive. He’d just scanned the corners from which you could see an exit, and only one had been occupied by a lone male omega. 

A lump of tension settled in his chest as he stepped forwards. There wasn’t enough homework in the world for this.

Wolfe’s hair was raven-black and long enough to disappear behind his shoulders, out of Nic’s line of view. He was dressed in the soft beige clinic uniform, which from Nic’s experience either meant that he was being restricted or he didn’t own any of his own clothes. Were the same restrictions dealt out to adults as they were to children here? Not as punishments, surely, but... He stopped and kept a wince from his expression. Yes. Suicide prevention, perhaps. 

He looked small, but Nic couldn’t really tell how much of that was in his hunched position, and the thinness evident in his wrists and hands. And, as he neared the table, in Wolfe’s face too. Pinched and hollow.

Even closer, as he sat down, he could see that Wolfe’s brown skin was covered in darker, flaky patches. Dry and probably itchy. Nic wished he didn’t know that was a sign of malnutrition. 

His scent was lovely. Even through its undeniably sour, bitter overtones of stress. Even through Nic’s very best attempts to completely ignore any olfactory input. 

(It was to be expected, after all. That was the point of the scent book; omegas picked vetted and trained support partners -

\- And also un-trained support partners, Nic bemoaned yet again, as if the months of seminars and counselling he’d had for under-eighteens meant nothing at all - 

\- based on the scent they found … well, at minimum, found least stressful. And scent compatibility was generally mutual. So it was entirely understandable that Wolfe’s scent was appealing.)

He smelt a fraction of his nerves seep out into his scent.

 _Shit. Get control of yourself, Nic_. 

And it was then, of _course_ it was then, at Nic’s maximum distraction, that he reached the table and Wolfe brought his head up and snapped, 

“Are you finished staring yet?” 

He had a faint foreign accent, though if Nic hadn’t known from the file that Wolfe had grown up in the state of Alexandria, he’d never have been able to place him. 

Nic winced. Great. He’d fucked it up immediately. What had he been thinking, gaping at the omega like a stunned fish?

“Yes,” he said, truthfully, taking a leaf out of Dario’s playbook and hoping that blunt honesty outside of usual social norms might save him. Then, because he couldn’t bear to _fully_ copy Dario, he added, “Sorry.”

Wolfe raised his eyebrows, then pointed at the seat next to him. “Sit. I’m hungry.”

Nic noticed that their section of table was empty of trays or crockery and cutlery. Oh, no. Had he kept Wolfe waiting? He was well into mentally cursing Parker when Wolfe reached up to rub the back of his neck. 

It looked like a nervous tic, and seeing it helped Nic regain a heaping dose of perspective. 

Of course Wolfe was being sharp. He was anxious and in an environment he disliked, and confronted with someone entirely new. And Parker had explicitly warned him about Wolfe’s confrontational attitude. It was supposed to be Nic’s job to take this. 

If Nic hadn’t let Brendan’s knife of a tongue bother him, why should he let Wolfe’s? 

He was here for a purpose. Just sit and be a reassuring and ideally distracting presence, and either Wolfe would ask for him again, or he wouldn’t. 

As he sat down opposite Wolfe, he inhaled and exhaled deeply, centring himself. 

Wolfe shot him another sharp, jabbing glance. “It’s been a while since I’ve been given the once-over by a cop, I’ve got to admit.”

“Really?” That mutter came from the seat next to Wolfe’s but-one, where a plump man with hooded eyes was shaking his head. 

“Shut up, Dinh,” Wolfe shot back in a bored tone. 

“You can’t just _accuse_ random alphas of being -”

Wolfe looked from Dinh to Nic and raised his eyebrows again. 

Nic briefly pondered his next impulse, then shrugged and went for it. “He’s right. Well, historically, anyway. I _was_ a cop.”

An unmistakable look of satisfaction crossed Wolfe’s face, only to be dislodged by a flinch as someone came up to the table carrying two trays. 

“Wahaila, why is he eating the same bland mush as me?”

Nic eyed the contents of his tray, suspicious thanks to Wolfe’s astonished tone. 

Grilled chicken thighs, creamy mashed potatoes and carrots and sweetcorn on the side. Edible, if, yes, bland. 

He shrugged and picked up his plastic cutlery. “Food is food.”

“No. No, it’s not.” Wolfe glared at him. It was a dark, caustic expression and it made Nic replay his words in his head. 

Oh. It probably wasn’t overly sensitive to say “Food is food” to the man who’d presumably not had a normal diet in a very long time. 

Not to repeat a theme, but, shit. 

Luckily, Wolfe had already brought up a topic of conversation for Nic to switch to hastily. “How does a university professor know a cop when he sees one, then?”

Wolfe granted him with a brief look up from where he was slowly and precisely dividing his mash and vegetables into sections. His fingers were crooked and he held his cutlery awkwardly. “University professors weren’t born university professors, now, were they?”

“Could have fooled me, the way you talk,” mumbled a heavyset Arab man, sat one seat down from Nic. 

One corner of Wolfe’s mouth twitched, and the unpleasant scent of his anxiety was briefly overridden by something richer. He tapped his fork against the side of his plate, as if redirecting everyone’s attention. “You’re too young to have retired.”

It took Nic a moment to parse that as a hidden question, aimed at him. By that point he already had a mouthful of mashed potato. 

The lump he swallowed was far too big, and he winced as it slowly slid down his throat. “Quit after an injury. I do security consulting these days.”

“What’s that?” asked the man Wolfe had called Dinh. 

“A cop who’s no longer ashamed to say he’s for hire,” Wolfe said, in a voice that was positively silky with venom. 

That didn’t hit Nic as hard as Wolfe was no doubt expecting. He’d heard worse, and he was primed, by now, for a tongue-lashing. “It’s nice to be self-employed,” he said with a deliberately casual air, and watched as Wolfe gave him an annoyed look with a forkful of food halfway to his mouth.

He couldn’t quite relax into his tiny victory, however. The tension of the usual track of a conversation about his career built in his chest. It wasn’t a sensible router to go down, under the circumstances.

Almost without realising he met Wolfe’s gaze again, and saw the man’s eyes light up as he somehow sensed the unfinished topic. 

Those eyebrows went up again. Challenging him. 

Ugh, now he was in a fix. Backing down would probably encourage Wolfe to push him verbally. But he _really_ couldn’t approach this like he normally would. 

“Normally, people then ask how I got injured,” he said eventually. 

“Good point,” said the heavyset Arab man to Nic’s right. “How _did_ you-”

“I couldn’t be less interested in that. It’s nice to be above the common milieu and their knot-measuring contests.” It was a quick, dry response, but Wolfe didn’t drop his gaze fast enough to avoid Nic seeing the way his eyes turned bleak and lightless again. His scent turned to something somehow simultaneously rancid and astringent, so strong that Nic saw Dinh shuffle his chair an inch further away. As if that would help. 

This sort of uncontrolled phereome spraying was usually only seen in either deliberate rudeness or young children, and it made Nic’s heart ache because he knew it wasn't likely to be rudeness. It was too uncouth a move for someone who managed to look refined while still looking half-starved.

Luckily, he was used to this. He had training for this. 

Carefully, making sure that he had both hands clearly and non-threateningly in view, he drew in another centering breath and let a soft ripple of calm alpha pheromones waft across the table. 

* * *

Two weeks ago, Parker had brought Wolfe the scent book. He’d flipped through it reluctantly, barely even bothering to inhale. He didn’t _want_ to find a support alpha. 

Rose, peach, vanilla .. he flicked very quickly past such sweet scents. Once or twice, something might make him stop and check. A bright citrus note, or the warmth of amber. Myrrh, of all things. 

He found Parker by accident - her sea-salt pheromonal scent was unmistakable. That had to be out of date, he mused, turning the page. Conflict of interest, surely? 

Niccolo Santi’s deep, complex scent had stopped his hand mid-turn, and it had taken several inhales for him to feel like he had anywhere near its full bouquet. Earthy, rich, smoky and woody. Agarwood. A very alpha scent, agarwood. It made his mind create ridiculous images, like black soil under ancient trees, or thick resin sliding over aged bark. 

That scent had been immediately soothing even from that old sample. 

Face-to-face, deliberately released, fresh and living, the effect was more potent than several of the drugs they’d tried Wolfe on recently. 

He felt as though he’d suddenly been plunged into a warmth bath. He slouched back in his chair and the cutlery dropped from his aching fingers as they uncurled. He managed to avoid making an embarrassing sound only by clenching his jaw closed and biting his tongue. 

Still, it didn’t have the same reassuring effect as Parker had had on him a week or so ago. The icy, squeezing fist stayed on his chest, weighing him down with every breath. 

Then, he had been half-scared out of his remaining wits by his associations of leaving his room, and had needed the sense of safety and security. 

Now? Now, he wasn’t scared. Now he was angry. 

How dare someone who smelt so good be a knuckle-dragging ex-cop who thought that boasting about his _scars_ was an acceptable conversation topic?

Their conversation had been almost agreeable until now. Perhaps the alpha had believed he’d hidden his flustered reactions. He certainly hadn’t. 

But then. That. 

Perhaps Wolfe could have won that thread of conversation, too. But he had no desire to brag about how he had acquired any of his scars. Wasn’t it quite enough to be deluged with that every night in his sleep? 

In his mind's eye, the police camera flashed again. Fragments of vision and sound, fluorescent reality so sharp that it cut him. 

With a herculean effort, Wolfe grasped his cutlery again and stabbed out blindly into the food in front of him. He didn’t owe this alpha his hormonally-coerced quiescence. 

“Stop that,” he snapped. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look up from the table. He chewed the bland, dry chicken that he’d just put into his mouth and stared at Niccolo’s hands across the table. Stereotypical big, boxy alpha hands, peppered with dark hair. “This is a wholly unsuitable place to spray scent around like that.”

“Yeah, God forbid anyone spray scent around-”

“Shut up, Marcus.”

Wolfe paid only minimal attention to Marcus and Dinh’s squabbling. He focused instead one seat further down, to where Ariane sat. He’d spoken the most to Ariane Daskalakis of any of his fellow omegas here. (Not that that was saying much.) Most of the conversation with her had been mocking each other’s very different Greek accents. 

Ariane was the omega who’d told him about Parker’s impressive ability to dampen her natural scent down to well within beta limits. The omega who _needed_ that level of dampening, because all alphas reminded her too much of her abusive ex-wife. 

She looked all right, but he couldn’t catch even a wisp of her scent thanks to the damn alpha waterfall sitting in front of him. 

He caught her eye and raised his eyebrows. She raised them right back and stared at him for a moment, then her face brightened and she tilted her plate a fraction towards him. 

That made him bite down a rare chuckle even as he shook his head. Yes, he did definitely want her rogan josh curry more than his own meal, despite its doubtless cheap, mass-produced canteen appearance. 

But she didn’t seem bothered. He wasn’t even .... ah. He wasn’t even sure that she could smell it. 

He scrutinised his tablemates. Dinh could definitely smell it: he looked uncomfortable. Ahmed looked unbothered, which wasn’t overly surprising. From the little Wolfe had heard, his abuse hadn’t been at the hands of an alpha. 

Hm. He overcame his reluctance and raised his head to get another look at Niccolo. It didn’t quite fit the puzzle; the big, strong ex-cop with such laser-focus over his scent emission. 

Dark hazel eyes met his, and another soft wave of induced relaxation flowed over Wolfe. He gritted his teeth until his entire head ached, un-clenching them with difficulty to say,

“I said stop, are you deaf?”

“Sorry. I’ll stop.” Niccolo’s voice was calm and steady and low, and made Wolfe want to stab him with a fork. He didn’t need to be spoken to like that. 

And Niccolo did stop. Just like that, leaving only residue in the air. Wolfe shivered and tucked himself hard up against the table in lieu of curling up on his seat, or possibly even under the table. 

He cursed his susceptibility to alpha pheromones. 

“I’m sure that came in handy during interrogations.”

With satisfaction, he watched Nic’s lips tighten. Ah, he was that sort. Disparage his morals for the best effect. 

“I got that training here, actually. I look after a few boys.”

Wolfe shrugged and let Nic’s defensiveness and the conversation thread (what boys?) hang awkwardly in the air as he continued eating.

It didn’t last. How could it, with food that bad? 

His plastic cutlery was almost unusable now, thanks to the way his fingers were shaking and burning if he tried to stiffen them. Every mouthful stuck in his throat.

No-one was watching and no-one was coming to get him and no-one was probably even talking about him, but sadly his body found instincts far more compelling than facts and he found himself flinching at every movement in his peripheral vision. 

Fine. Fuck it. He’d eaten half of his meal. He'd sat here for ages. No-one could fault him for that. He scraped his chair back. 

It took him a moment, once on his feet, to settle the steadily-growing lightheadedness, and in that time he heard Niccolo push his chair backwards too. 

He’d almost forgotten the particulars of the situation. That was right, the alpha was his personal babysitter. He probably wasn’t even allowed in the dining room without Wolfe being present. 

“Are you all right?” That tone of voice again. Ugh. 

“Fine. I’ve done my bit, you’ve done yours.” Wolfe edged out from behind the table. It felt like losing a protective barrier and made his skin crawl. He turned away and marched towards the doorway to get back to his room without as much as a backwards look at his supposed ‘support alpha’. 

Like an extremely competent shadow, Naomi appeared at his side. Thankfully, she didn’t try to talk, just opened the door when his hands and wrists failed him. 

But it was fine. He didn’t need her help during the walk back. He kept his eyes up and walked along, powered by indignation at the whole pathetic affair. 

_Well!_

Hopefully that would be the last of it.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [To Learn and to Heal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27651470) by [RosalindInPants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosalindInPants/pseuds/RosalindInPants)




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